Verizon SMT5800 Cell Phone Review - Imaging

Mark Brezinski
Published on March 17, 2008 Comment on this

Summary
Video capture on the SMT5800 is bad, even for a cell phone. Its still capture capabilities aren't bad, however. While it'd still make a profoundly terrible digital camera, its pictures will find their way onto many a Facebook or MySpace without anyone being the wiser. Add in the phone's handful of picture editing tools, and the SMT5800 is slightly above average in imaging.

Resolution (4.93)
The all-seeing eye of scientific testing found that the camera on the SMT5800 isn't that bad for a cell phone camera. We found it had 1053 lw/ph horizontally and 836.7 lw/ph vertically. The first score is a solid line width per pixel height result, but the second was lacking a bit. Overall, however, not a bad capturing tool for a phone, especially one on a business device with no pretensions of being a camera phone.

The lw/ph results were found using Imatest, our picture analysis software. What we do to test resolution is snap some pictures of a chart, which come out looking like the above picture. We then run the pictures through Imatest, which counts how many individual lines the camera was capable of capturing. The finer and closer together the lines get, the more likely it is for a camera to smudge them to gray.

Cell Phone	HTC SMT5800	HTC Tilt	Pantech Duo
Score	4.93	3.56	1.09
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1053/836.7	895/1082	512/457
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Nokia N82	Motorola Q 9m	Palm Centro
Score	7.59	2.24	1.41
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1307/1288	733/740	581/596
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (2.48)
To test color representation, we again take pictures and ask Imatest what it thinks. In the case of color accuracy, Imatest was none too impressed with the SMT5800. Virtually everything was shifted towards yellow in some respect. Such a uniform shift, even amongst blues, is quite an interesting result. The shift isn't so much that all of your pictures will look completely jaundiced, but it is enough so you'd notice the colors look a bit off.

Cell Phone	HTC SMT5800	HTC Tilt	Pantech Duo
Score	2.48	2.23	2.34
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Nokia N82	Motorola Q 9m	Palm Centro
Score	5.45	3.41	8.08
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (1.40)
First of all, no phone handles noise well: our average score in this section is a 1.08. Given this, the SMT5800 performs relatively well. As you can see in the below chart, it beat out its competitors. Does this mean your pictures will be noise free? Far from it. We're just saying that it sucks a little less than the average phone out there. Noise in cell phone pictures is just something we'll all have to deal with for a while given how small the imaging chips are.

Live Preview (4.0)
Many people will think the live preview is really blurry, but in reality it's not that far off from the final capture. Panning or motion will create moderate blurring, but the image doesn't lag too far behind the the action. Colors should also be portrayed accurately. The live preview also uses the whole 2.4-inch screen, which is certainly more ideal than phones that plaster toolbars over potential viewfinding real estate. Overall, the live preview feature on the SMT5800 is just shy of mediocre.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (12.20)
Starting with the phone closed and unlocked, we were able to capture a picture in 1.64 seconds. This is ridiculously fast, and due mainly to the phone's insane shutter to shot speed. There is a bit of a catch, however: you will only be able to achieve this time with picture preview on. If picture preview is off, the process will take about 2.11 seconds. We know, it doesn't make sens, but there it is. If you'd like more info on how we conduct this test, see this article.

Shot to Shot Time (5.94)
The SMT5800 has a Sports Mode, which is like a normal burst mode but sounds slightly less explosive. There are three speed settings to choose from. Typically this would mean the faster settings take pictures at a lower resolution, but this doesn't seem to be the case. On the fastest setting, were able to take a series of five pictures in 2.53 seconds, which is about 1.98 frames per second. This is fast, even for a burst Sports Mode. With this mode, it's hard to blame the camera for a missed moment. To learn more about this amazing test, read this.

Shutter to Shot Time (22.22)
Again, whether or not picture preview is on can change your shutter to shot time substantially. If it's on, the shutter to shot time should be a blistering 0.09 seconds; when it's off, you should see a more modest, but still impressive, 0.31 seconds. To learn more about this test, read this.

Interface (4.5)
Taking pictures is simple enough. You can use the select key or shutter button to take a picture. The shutter key is placed a bit awkwardly, requiring you to press it with your left index finger instead of your right. We found ourselves favoring the select key, even though it doesn't provide as much of a "I'm using a digital camera" experience.

The software is simple, but the menu is needlessly confusing to navigate. The menu itself consists of a horizontal line of different icons. Highlighting an icon will display its options, listed vertically, in the main portion of the screen. As some menus only contain a few options, we felt the tendency to take up the entire screen was a bit unnecessary. Moving from menu item to menu item is unintuitive. Up and down will scroll through the vertical lists of options, which makes sense. Scrolling through the horizontal list, however, uses the left soft key as opposed to left and right. Right is akin to clicking on an item, opening any subfolders or sub-options onscreen; left will back you out of these subfolders/options. We tend to like the visual style of this interface, but the method of controlling it is difficult to grasp.

Photo Album Software Internal (3.0)

The photo album software will display nine thumbnails at a time. You can create your own folder structure, but since you can't manage multiple pictures at once, organization is a bit of a chore. The album can construct very basic slide shows that cycle through pictures in a given folder, but there aren't many options for customizing the show. Though basic, this is the typical Windows Mobile Standard picture album.

Manual Control (0.0)
The SMT5800 doesn't have any manual controls.

Zoom (1.0)
There is a limited digital zoom, but since picture resolution is already so low, we wouldn't recommend using it. All a digital zoom does is crop the picture and enlarge the result so it appears to have zoomed in. Optical zoom can enlarge an object without sacrificing resolution.

Focus (0.0)
The SMT5800 has a fixed focus for which we don't award points.

Flash (0.0)
There is no flash.

Metering (2.0)
The only metering option the SMT5800 offers is the choice between center or average metering. Typical phones will also offer brightness settings, but the SMT5800 has never been one to follow the crowd, although most phones also don't offer any metering options.

White Balance (2.0)

There are four white balance settings beyond the default automatic mode: daylight, night, incandescent, and fluorescent.

Image Handling (6.0)

As a Windows Mobile phone, the SMT5800 has pretty solid image handling software. You can rotate, crop, or correct the color. Though three options might not look like much, most phones don't have any image handling features.

Video

Overall Video Score (4.0)

The SMT5800 is bad at video capture in terms of resolution and overall interface, but it does have some nice options available. There are a ton of potential capture formats, a specific mode to film MMS video, and a bevy of other options for limiting video. You can even adjust the flicker rate at your leisure. Overall, it's a nice video capture program for a cell phone camera, but it isn't going to take great videos.

Video Resolution (1.61)
The camera on the SMT5800 is just not very good. Though cell phone video is typically terrible, our tests found the resolution to be 125.6 lw/ph horizontally and 127.9 lw/ph vertically (again, lw/ph means line widths per pixel height, and is how our tests measure resolution; an average score would be around 250 lw/ph for each, and an incredible score would be around 400). The video certainly won't be a high quality, but it should be good for viewing on the small screen of a cell phone.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
HTC SMT5800	125.6/127.9	1.61
HTC Tilt	895/1082	4.51
Pantech Duo	247/215	5.31
Nokia N82	434/461	20.01
Motorola Q 9m	139/129	1.79
Palm Centro	581/596	6.82

Video Compression (8.0)
The SMT5800 has some good compression options: H.263, 3GPP2, MPEG4, or Motion JPEG.

Interface (4.5)

The interface is very similar to the camera's. A few menu items have been removed or added, but overall it's the same visually impressive interface that's cumbersome to navigate.

Manual Control (0.0)
There is one control we'd consider manual, and that's the flicker adjustment. Basically, lights tend to either flicker at 50 Hz or 60 Hz, depeding on whether you live in the UK or US. Therefore, this option will allow you to compensate for this difference. The result is nothing you'd really notice; it's just to avoid the odd frame that'd get taken between fluorescent blinks. This is a ridiculously minor feature, however, and not really worthy of awarding points for.

Zoom (1.0)
Again, digital zoom is your only option here. Digital zoom essentially lowers the resolution of the capture, and since the video is such a low resolution to begin with, we'd advise against using this feature.

Editing (0.0)
There are no video editing options.

Modes (4.0)
Videos can either be limited for MMS messaging, or limited by time or resolution.

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